


The Rip Tide

by Radiolaria



Series: Mauvais Genre [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drowning, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Not Beta Read, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 11:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tale of the lost mariner was one that would eventually be told at the end of every sailor’s life.<br/>His was no exception.<br/>Or maybe it was.</p><p>A twist on the Little Mermaid tale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rip Tide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leiascully](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/gifts).



> A gift for Leaiscully, who likes fairy tales.
> 
> I fear the tag sad seems a tad ridiculous, but it really fits. If you know the original story by Hans Christian Andersen, you are aware of its harshness. 
> 
> The plot is very loosely based on the fairy tale. I borrowed elements from other stories, which I would gladly recommend at the end.

_Ma pauvre tête n’est plus peuplée que d’algues et de coquillages._

_Jules Supervielle ,  « L’Inconnue de la Seine. »_

 

The tale of the lost mariner was one that would eventually be told at the end of every sailor’s life.

His was no exception.

Or maybe it was.

 

***

 

By an evening of late April, the clipper “Time and Space”, loaded with fine products from Marseilles, was caught in a storm when approaching land. The sailors, exhausted after a rough journey, had been caught off-guard by the clouds crouching against the coast and in the blink of an eye the man at the helm had been swept overboard.

The captain had hit the surface with a thunderous tap like on the rump of Poseidon’s stallions and the sea began her onslaught on the vessel.

His crew used to call him the Doctor, for he took great pleasure in fixing items he would find in the hold and on the docks, gifting them when repaired to anyone interested. He once put back together a man with his bare hands, who had fallen from the great mast. He was a magician and beloved by many in the small port town.

But his men were not prompt enough to cast a hand or a rope and he was soon under water.

He felt everything at first, the cold stinging water, shards of wood biting his chest where  the rail had hit, the pressure soaring as he was hurled into darkness and silence.

Then, nothing. He was suspended between the vast stillness of the deep and the muffled uproar of the wreck. Above and below meddled and stretched by the ample waves shaking the sea. Her great dark body not nearly disturbed and the captain was lost.

A gleam blinked above his head, which he mistook for the moon. His arms, numb until then, struck up and began tearing his body out of the darkness, straight to the surface.

He followed his hands like lighthouses until they broke the water open. The air was sharp and the sky starless; the waves like towers were concealing the boat from his view.

The echoes of his name cast by their beloved voices were lost in the wind. And more and more by the minutes. They were leaving him behind, stealing to the coast, sparing the vessel her captain’s fate.

His calls died in his throat.

Lost.

He thought he had died, many and many times before, knocked out of a raft, caught in storms, cast away, but lost, never. Each time he welcomed death, because it was the sea reclaiming her right on him who had sailed her for so long. He would have no other mistress, he thought, no other constant executioner than the sea. He trusted her cruelty above all, more than the heart of men and as much as his own relentlessness.

And so began his lost race, the slow burning of his strength in paddling against the current and the wind to find somehow the thin strip of land closer.

On land, he had a tenant, Lady Vastra. She used to say he was sick with desire to meet his end in the arms of a sea creature. With no body to imprison in a box and left to decay under the earth. Lost at sea. He fancied the mystery.

On land, he had found the “Time and Space”, barely sailed, abandoned in the shipyard because new clippers, swifter and easier to the hand had been acquired.

On land he had found the Williams and the fascinating Donna, and Rose, and too many people.

On land, he could drown in people, never in water.

There it was as slipping into a coat of dark green. Heavy, cold and green, soon to drag him down.

He floated for a couple of minutes on his back, as long as his aching body could bear it and fell back into his vain cadence of strokes. Measured. Slow.  After a while, neither resting nor swimming was sustainable. The storm had calmed and the ship disappeared, so far away in the mist he could not perceive her anymore.

He swallowed water, one, two, three times, and resignation with each stroke. He would die far from home.

He began yelling at the sky; he yelled his apologies to his father and his long lost love to Rose – she had lost him to the sea. He mourned his ship most, his beauteous vessel which would end up in the hands of that furious Scottish sea-wolf. The most beautiful thing he’s ever seen; many were swifter, neater, bigger, easier to handle. But she was solid and steady. He never feared once for his crew and cargo when she was flying her way out of the storms.

The coat was getting heavier on his shoulders and only a gust was enough to furl him in the fist of a wave. He sank again, following the columns of light building around him with the sky clearing. He could not feel his tears through the salt and the water.

 _Drowning is silly_ , he thought. _There ought to be a better word. It’s falling under the weight of water and lack of air. It’s suffocating in a kiss so immense, so overflowing, it permeates the inside of the body._

Bemusement settled his wandering mind as he found himself not sinking anymore. He had hands around his wrists, tiny cold hands like handcuffs. The surface neared and they burst out; someone cried and his eyes burnt hard. There was a body under his, pulling and undulating and swimming. The green coat was still on his shoulders.

Heavy. So heavy and comforting.

Sleep was calling him.

“Hello, don’t be afraid,” whispered a dark voice.

And the body under his started singing. There was something unsettling about the voice and he listened because he was intrigued. It was not beautiful, it was not even soothing. It was incredibly brittle and sad, like blowing over the opening of a bottle or passing a wet finger on a glass rim.

“You look like a statue,” the voice whispered. “A stone dropping to the bottom of the sea. Now, you wouldn’t want to end up there.”

He could see the sky, sense a hand fumbling, massaging, holding him across the chest, feeling his lips for a breath. Soft and tangy like weeds and sweet, and the singing was definitely peculiar.

So peculiar he wanted to listen for a little longer and not to fall asleep. Not yet.  The fresh sensation of curiosity washed the rim of his mind, unbidden.

Was he dreaming? Was he dying, the mariner lost at sea?

Darkness fell upon him once again. But close. Not wide like drowning, instead like an embrace. Hands were treading his exposed clavicles. Keeping him above water and darkness. And singing him to rest.

The morning dew found him resting in the little creek behind the docks. There, the hills and the rocks folded themselves to create a tiny bay, granite hands cupping still waters. He stretched his arms high, surprised to find the air so warm and tender after the tempest. With grateful bafflement, he beheld the unfamiliar cover responsible for his nightly comfort; a blanket woven in dried sea-weed and sun-kissed grass. Eyes wide, he took in his surroundings, chimneys from the village already smoking against the dawn-blushing sky, rising above the wood, near, the tide high drawn on the pearly sand like a blanket of light and the plain rock on which he was lying amidst the water, but dry.

It could be death. It could be home.

_But how?_

His lungs were free of water. His limbs taken with cold, but not exertion.

It would have been impossible for him to swim all the way from the tempest.

His hands ghosted over his chest, following a path he had learnt in dreams. The wound was clean.

 

***

 

“How did you get back?”

They asked the moment he set foot in the village, clothes torn, the vegetal blanket leaving a trail of dead leaves behind him.

“We were miles away from the coast! The ship barely made it.”

The mariners galloped all back from the drunken haze they had slipped in to alleviate the loss of their captain.

“Do you think a seal or a dolphin could drag you here?”

From the windows above, and the streets below, shutters and doors were flapped open, as he made his way to his house, shivering. Lady Vastra was waiting for him at the doorstep, so pale she looked green.

“He may have been simply rescued by smugglers escaping justice.”

She installed him in the living room, the fireplace bursting with flames, while the faces of his men were contorting in concern. Lady Vastra had called her maid to the rescue, attempting to chase them. Outside, he could see Doctor Williams’ house lighting up, and soon the man came rushing out, swaying at arm’s length his tool case.

“We would have organized a search in the morning.”

He was still, listening to the never-ending reel of questions tossed and threaded between his crew members. He was a man returned to life by the sea. Not a miracle, a soul cast away back to the land. His men would never look up to him without dread.

“Do you believe in sirens?” He quietly asked and the room went silent all around him. They stared at him with mouth gaping and eyes bulging like fishes out of the sea. Like absurd creatures torn away from the deep belly of the ocean and laid to rest on solid ground.

A scrawny man discreetly nipped at his shirt and murmured: “They’re stories.”

His smile was weary and crooked and dreamy.

“Aren’t we all?”

 

***

 

He ran a fever for three days, consequence of the cold coursing his body and setting afire one by one his nerve-endings.

He could not see, only hear in his dreams, the haunting “hello” and nothing of her face. He could not even fathom a face to match the glass song and dark voice. And this, more than the coat of wildness he had left on his doorstep, more than his impossible journey through the dark and cold, more than subtle hands combing his hair amidst raw power, this convinced him of her reality. As the third day cleared his mind, he was conscious enough to keep her a secret.

Thereupon, he moved in with doctor Williams’ family who were dear friends, eager to watch over his convalescence and forestall his bull-headedness. Amelia Williams had justly divined the moment he was out of Lady Vastra’s sight he would run to the creek and catch his death.

He accepted the Williams' proposition, simply because there was a chance that from his room looking over the woods, he might catch a glimpse of the little creek.

Every night, he would drag himself to the large window facing the sea, his telescope in hand and the thickest, most suffocating cover he could find on the shoulders. Every night, he would watch the sand triangle stretching between the rocks and the sea, and fall asleep against the window. The first sun beams would wake him up and he would crawl back into his bed. The recovery was hindered by his nocturnal expeditions to the brink realm of his room and each morning Amelia glared down at him, with a teasing slap for the back of his hand. But the eggs and bacon were always delicious.

He saw her by the end of the first week.

A white, white stain floating on the surface, like an eye and definitely not drifting, rather purposefully gliding long the beach. He opened his eyes wide, cursing Mrs. Williams for confiscating his observation instrument.

The view set his heart aflutter, feeling with a joy he thought only his ship could cause. He rose to his feet, the cover rustled down and he called, windows closed, but so faintly, so poorly it almost broke his belief in her. He could have dreamt such a cry.

She stilled, and hovered, and disappeared. As if she had heard.

He fell in love with the mystery of her, the impossibility. She did not come back to the creek afterwards and still he kept watch.

He would not let the skeptics rob him of her presence or her memory and still he kept her a secret.

 

***

 

“Mama said you were saved by a siren. Is it true, Doctor?” asked little Anthony the first time he was allowed in his room.

He was promptly ushered out.

 

***

 

He met her one afternoon as he was playing hide and seek with the children and got lost in the wood, not knowing them as well.

Woods are terrifying, they do not move. They just stand still and breathe. The waters dance and suffocate.

He found himself walking out of the dark and nearly fell long the steep rock face circling the creek. And nestled there, between the black rocks, in the water, barely out, she was.

Not a dream, but a woman.

The trees around him concealed his careful inspection.  He scooted down, closer, quieter, more breathless.

She could not be what he imagined since he imagined nothing about her. She was implanted in his mind with the certainty of a shard and he never questioned her presence.

She was shell-white, hair glistening, but light like the foam, golden–brown curls like maelstroms and clouds. The draft of her features more defined as he was edging near.

She did not flinch. Only her face and neck could be seen, marble of striking beauty. It was not the kind of dainty beauty the mention of siren invoked.

“Hello.” He offered.

“Hello.” She gave in.

His heart was beating with such an echo in his shallow chest he could hear two of them, thumping.

“I am the Doctor. That’s how they know me at the docks.”

A furrow appeared between her brows.

“Have you forgotten your name?”

He smiled, shuffling close. “Maybe. It was not given to me by someone I cherish.” She nodded. “Who are you? What is your name?”

“I come from the sea and I am always in the sea.” She paused, shifted to the left and sunk an inch into the water. He halted his progression. “And I always will be. I lost my name there.”

He took it as an invitation.

“You have lived so long even your name is lost? But everyone must have a name. It is a way to bring them to the world. Why do you think we name babies?”

She looked at him strangely and he wondered if mermaids had children under water. Her eyes were blue and green, vast, light-bearing trinkets. There seem to be so little matter in there. Just water and light, he thought. Eyes for making tears look pretty.

“I shall call you Melody.” A smile spread on his face as he said the name, so he said it again. “Melody. Would it please you, my lady? Because you saved me by singing to me.”

But she was not responding, mute and stilI, and a sorrow in the hollow of the cheek that had little concern with the naming of sirens. His face tensed and he whispered to himself. “I can hear the song of your sadness.”

She seemed to come back to him from faraway lands where no language is spoken.

“I’m alive, now. That’s why I’m sad.” She had a brief, quiet twitch of the lips. “I haven’t been for a very long time.”

He let out a child-like laughter.

“Alive isn’t sad.”

She blinked, once, and a tremor passed her lips. Her face fell as he understood, too late, the slight curve of her cheeks had been an earnest expression of happiness, even if timid.

“It’s sad when it’s over,” she confessed.

His heart beat even faster and he stepped one foot into the water. She sank deeper, only her eyes and wide curls above water. “Don’t go.” He could not ask what she was; it would have been most unkind. “Who are you?”

She shook her head, and disappeared in the deep.

 

***

 

“Sirens don’t exist.” Anthony had his lids closed and Amelia Williams was applying unguent on a nasty cut he had picked in a fight.

“I was saved by someone with lips to sing and hands to hold me.” He breathed, unhinged, trying to recall the touch. Then out of the blue: “Do fish have fingers?”

Anthony’s laughter filled the room and Amelia rolled her eyes.

“You were delirious for three days.”

He touched his lips.

“I was not before.”

 

***

 

She did not flee him. She came back. Always in secret and for him alone, as if leafing through his life. Week by week, long after he had been welcomed back to the ship. And then, year after year.

She would always hide from his eyes, but a loquacious secret she was.

It fast became a game; messages to her he left in a bottle, in the creek and sometimes suspended on a rope hanging from his cabin while they were at sea. Oddly enough, she answered in her own manner. Paper dissolved in water so she could not write him back, but she could read.

He expected her to leave oysters and seashells, corals and rocks. Instead he found a chip of pottery with her handwriting, a key as jest, a golden coin to taunt him. She had the most wicked sense of humour. He wondered just how well she knew humans and their customs. If she had been observing them from afar. And he became a little jealous.

He dreamt of her by day, but his nights were a dreamless slumber he could not escape or with difficulty. He had to fight his way out of the darkness each morning. Doctor Williams said it was only a leftover from the illness, his body still scarred.

He feared it was the green cloak of deep water on his shoulders. Dragging him back.

They saw the world together, the Doctor and Melody. He became bolder with his ship, accepted travels to destinations always more perilous and estranged. He sailed to the ice lands, and Africa, and India, Australia, and gone were the days when his wanderings would only encompass his native islands and France. And always she was at his sides, gliding; a faint light drawn in the dark waters, alongside the ship. He would wait for her by the moon, on the deck, when all the sailors were asleep, and talk with her until dawn.

The crew would mock his new found nocturnal liking and friendship for dolphins.

For eleven years and by her side, he sailed the world, and further. And every night by the rail he would fall a little more in love with her. With her timeless mind and lucent face, her stories of land and people even stranger, the keen curiosity she displayed for the cultures he would encounter on land, the laugh she had when he told her of his misadventures with women; Rose had been a beautiful blonde, whose hips and smile had prompted sailors to call siren, but of Melody, he would never see more than the head, white neck and arms, her chest held in a grey high corsage he found most disquieting. Her body remained a long pallid shadow billowing under water.

He got to treasure even more those moments when she held him upon her heart to keep him out of death, to bring him back home.

She would stray from the ship, sometimes, and disappear for weeks. Always she would come back; a little rosier, with thoughts grave and deep, and he wondered if she needed rest.

He asked once, while he was showing her on a deserted dock how to string flowers in a crown. She furiously dived and he never asked again.

 

***

 

“I’ve always wondered, raggedy sailor. Do you old wanderers grow a second heart, to live and love the sea as much as you love the living?”

 

***

 

She was more agitated than usual, that night, fretting and incapable of letting him leave her sight. Paler, fainter, more serious also.

At some point, he was carving a piece of wood, sat on the boat slip, talking, and was swimming alongside. He called her, handing her his work for appraisal, but she somehow contrived to completely miss it. It had slipped through her fingers.

She jerked forward to catch the carving, instead toppled completely over.

He caught glimpse of the rest of her body.

She had no tail, but pretty  toes, and white as bones, and a long tattered dress belonging to another century hung on her hips like sails curved by the wind.

He gulped.  

“You are not a siren.” His voice was trembling.

“Sirens are a fairy tale.” She ignored his gaze, teasing, and put the wood piece beside him. “And very impractical beings.”

He had spent so much time with her, held her in such secret, it had never crossed his mind she could have been simply human.

“Yes, but how…” He dithered, tasting suddenly the dryness of his lips and a tepid, unfamiliar clenching of the stomach, like doubt.”What are you doing in water? Who are you?”

She glided closer, extending a hand in his direction and nearly taking his own nervous one, curled on the rock. “Don’t be afraid,” she breathed. “I am just dead.”

He half burst out of laughter, before recoiling at her steady eyes.

“But, you saved me,” he stuttered. “You were there with me. You are there.” The muscles in his neck were strung.

She nodded with a smile.

“I drowned, long ago, alone. So, now, I drift.” She shrugged, before lifting her gaze to him. “You just caught me.”

He lurched forward, grasping at her wet, cold hands, ensuring her reality. “You cannot be dead. _You_ caught me. You brought me back ashore. You were…”

She was quite near him then, her derelict dress grazing his feet in the water.

“I am _not real_ ; I am of the lost people. We are memories that the sea caught when our bodies drowned. Like a mirror holding the image long after. They resent me for saving you, you know, the dead of the sea. They were hoping you could join us.” A smirk wrinkled her nose. “They do not like me very much on a daily basis, I fear. Now they despise me even more. They usually stay at the bottom of the sea, upside down, and stare at the sea-weed and eat molten wood. I go exploring. I’ve always enjoyed it, sound, life. There is silence at the bottom of the sea.” Their hands were resting in his lap. “I am sorry.”

And she blinked. She simply closed and opened her pretty lids and he could not help doing as well.

When he opened his eyes, she was tangible.

Until she was not and he stared at his hands feeling only cold and wet.

And not her hands, between his.

Her hands fell back to the water, with a dull sound. He beheld he absence of ripples with awe.

“You created me the moment you drowned. Or I created you creating me.” She huffed, nearly fond. “It’s complicated.”

Her face showed no trace of destruction, when he felt he had just been dismantled. Not even to death. To a state where amnesia was preferable. His hands were at his temples, rubbing, concealing her face and, at the same time, spreading its watery residue there. They hovered around his body, lost, looking for a mooring, fleeing her body that was so close to him.

“And now, I think I am going to leave you alone for a while.” Her gaze was jarringly haggard. ”Just so you heal.”

His head shot up, blunt. He wanted to hurt her. But he could not resent her for being dead, or saving his life, or even finding him. He had sought her first.

“How long will it take?”

She did not answer and he realised she intended to leave him cowardly. Anger soared within his chest, then terror. Melody was nothing if brave. He had dreamt her.

“Why cannot you stay?” There was a warning edge to his voice he could not contain. Like foam forming naturally on the crest of waves.

“Because everything has its time.” She lifted her white shoulders. “Mine ended long ago and you have so much to look forward to. I’m sorry I loved you. It was dangerous. Not a mistake, just dangerous. I hurt you and I’m sorry for that. Now, go your way.”

He lowered his head on his chest, studying the gleams on the surface, and her body that was not there, under water. Had she been only pilfering slices of happiness from him before returning to the darkness?

“You saved me.” He repeated, mindless. “Will we meet again?”

 “Maybe.” She sighed. “Beyond.”

 _Oh._ _But this was not right_ , he thought. When we're holding on to something precious, we run. We run and run as fast as we can and we don't stop running until we are out from under the shadow.

And Melody knew this. She was letting him run, out of the darkness.

“No.”

She frowned, mildly annoyed.

That was something for which he could compete with the sea. Melody and her goodbye. He would not keep her with him, if she desired to go. But he would let her go on his terms.

He breathed deeply, jumped into the water and forced his mind to feel his hands on her arms, to see her pained face before his.

“Tell me, because I know Melody, I always know,” he murmured. “When it was just a rusted hairclip, I knew. When it was a pebble, I knew you were mocking me.  When it was an icon, I knew. You are not just a memory, you feel like someone laughing and hurting and living. And now lying. I want the truth. I won’t see you again, will I? Ever. Not in this life, and not in death. I am not a child. Tell me.”

She blinked and nearly evaporated from his sight.

“I was someone else once; _she_ died, forgotten.” She began, slow, measured, as if trying to explain to a small child, or exhausting one’s breath in water. “There was no one left to remember her. So the sea welcomed me; she keeps us here, when there is no one to keep us alive in the memory of the living. I see wondrous creatures and faraway lands under water, and I have all the time in the world. But I have no soul. And the sea holds me.”

He gripped tighter and rocked her to his chest where she simply breathed, and shivered, and she was _real_ while fading.

“Her hold weakened each time I floated up to the surface first to save you, then to see you.” He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, adamant. “When the sea lets me go, I shall disappear completely and melt into foam. The real me, she had a soul; she died a long time ago, and she never met you. I shall never have existed. You see, water has no memory. I must go back to the sea.”

Her lashes were brushing his collarbone.

“I can remember you.”

A stifle grasped her frame. She _felt_ so alive for a dream.

“I am an echo. You can’t remember an echo. It passes you. Only the sea can hold the echoes.” She laughed. “And the mountains, but I was told they keep perched on top mounts and drop avalanches on walkers. We drowned people never would harm the living.” A glint of sadness took her lashes and shaped there a regret. “We are forgotten. But I am glad I’ve travelled the world, above. I could never do that when I was alive. It was a beautiful world to live in. I need to try and go back. Maybe there is time enough. The sea will take me back and I can remember you.”

He lifted her face to his, but she only pulled away, without escaping completely his grasp.

“Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely,” he cried. “There must be something I can do. Tell me.”

She looked back at the wide horizon, the ship's silhouettes swaying around them.

“The tide is coming. I’m sorry, my love.” A gentle tug caused him to release her and she stroked his cheek. “There is nothing you can do. I have to go.”

“Then I shall follow you.” He tried, but with such poor conviction and she knew it. “The wind, the waves, whispers above the sea, they say something about eternity…”

Melody widened her eyes and considered him with a minute shock of happiness on the face which startled him out of speech for a moment. She briefly looked away, as if alarmed with hope, and whispered something before leveling her gaze to his.

“I can follow you. If I drown, if I…”

She lifted a finger to his lips and silenced him. It felt like a kiss, really turned into a caress that glided to his temples and hair, before tracing his cheekbones.

He found himself deprived of words.

She opened her hand on his face, solid again, and for the first time since he brushed against her above the deep, green death of the sea, _warm_.

 _Warm_. A memory.

He blinked back a tear.

“Don’t. Live. Now is not your time. Goodbye.” And she trembled like a ripple. “But first,” and the smile she gave him was the most tender he had ever seen. “Hello.”

She waved her head.

And it was his head.

He sunk in her, briefly, intensely, with all that she never told him swirling around his head and all they never lived.

Colours and touches. Impressions, laughter, Time and Space and Melody at the bar. And Melody on land and Melody in the wind.

In a time he could not recognise, surrounded by faces he could not count.

There were shores she had visited, ruins and wrecks, and palaces, and sharp vessels.

And a home in a street.

He had given her a name and she was giving them a life.

But as he was drinking the sensations of her being him, he could perceive, with an ever-growing clarity the waves howling a cry only she could hear.

_Too late. You are forgotten, Melody, and drowned. You lost your soul long before when you join the city under water; it leaked right out of you._

She would shake her head –his head- as if chasing a swarm away.

A hand in his, she danced him around the vast labyrinth of her mind, faster. Names and fruits. Goat cheese and boredom. And need and wrinkles.

_Melody, drown him. His body will drag you down back under. If you ask him, he will stay forever, under the sea._

She knew they were lying. He would not be forgotten and would never be hers to keep with the lost souls. She would have his body for a while, then his bones. Then nothing.

And a kiss on his brow.

_Melody, you will fade._

And she would order “ _enough”._

The drowned people believed in nothing. That is why the sea reclaimed them. They were as light as foam, unburdened by the weight of love and hope and sorrow.

And then, she was miserable. For making herself hurt so much. And even more, for making his heart break.

And again, they would chant, the dead of the sea, a litany that was the soft song of the water to untrained ears. And again Melody would shake her head and drag him back to the light of their shared dream.

And she loved him.

The voices died.

They were left floating in the bluest blue and he never had dreamt happiness had this colour.

“Hello.”

He felt her palpitating, a little too gingerly, until she pushed him out of her mind.

Her hands fell into the water and she averted her eyes from him, breathless shell.

“Goodbye.”

A smile formed on her lips and he could swear it hung in the air for several seconds after she had turned and plunged into the sea, not even lit by dawn.

 

***

 

“Are they ghosts? Can’t we see them?” Anthony would ask. After all those years, he would still be unable to understand. He braced little Clara who was playing in his lap and practically falling.

“Is my mom in there? “

Anthony caressed her hair, without a word.

“They are forgotten, Clara. Your mother is not with them.”

 

***

 

He waited a long life. He waited in adventures and romance, and distraction and beauty in the semblance of happiness. He lived for the wonders of the world and its people, for the ocean ever sailed and his ship ever doctored. Until she had so many holes in her he could lie awake in her belly and see the stars through her cracks. He saw beauteous boreal nights splayed on water and ice mastodons. But without Melody.

Born too late.

He searched for her. It took him long, with the little information he had gathered from her during their time together; he eventually found her. Her name was River Malone. The irony struck him as something that would have make her laugh, and after some time, he managed to crack a smile.

She was from a little Scottish village, Gallifrey, which was burnt to the ground, just before she left for the new world, where she eventually died. Or rather, where she nearly died. She fell from the boat coming alongside, no one knows quite how.

It was so long ago and no document seems to mention her.

He waited a long time and he remembered her every day.

He hoped there was still a chance she got back to the deep sea on time and that her echo lingered on. Even if he had never seen her again

And dying, Anthony, grow-up, and old Amelia, so diminished, held his hands. His heart was simply too tired.

“The sea didn’t take you after all, raggedy man.”

He had a secret, bitter smile. For he was taken a long time ago, his heart with him.  She never noticed. That’s what happens when you develop a second heart for a siren. You end up with two: one deep at the bottom of the ocean, the other on land with the living.

He would want Amelia and Anthony and Clara and her children and grandchildren to remember the siren who once saved him. So that there was always someone for her.

Maybe if he got enough people to remember her, she would last. She would in some way grow a soul like he developed a second heart and take her memories of the wide world and his love with her to an eternity in ether. Where he could find her again.

But his breath was too short and he could not even whisper to Amelia.

How he desperately wanted to tell her to remember and tell the tale of lost Melody.

He died with a hope on the lips, not even spoiled by confession.

As he required it, his body was burnt and the ashes cast in the sea.

They say the morning after and for eleven days, without any explanation, and since then once a year, on the night he created her and she created him, the foam has the most surprising green colour.

Like water and light only. Foam for fixing castles out of clouds.

 

***

“Say, Grandma. Do you think the mariner ever saw the siren again?”

Clara clicked her tongue in her mouth and replaced the blanket on the little girl’s shoulders.

“The Universe is big. It's vast and complicated and ridiculous. Little Martha, if you really believe they never found each other, what is the point of this story?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration:
> 
> [The Ghost and Mrs. Muir](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039420/) by Mankiewicz
> 
> [L'Enfant de la haute mer](http://books.google.fr/books?id=JOnxnAEACAAJ&dq=L'enfant+de+la+haute+mer+jules+supervielle&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=gE6qUurbGrGc0wXEvIGoAw&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA) by Jules Supervielle


End file.
